Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

Ritter had already chosen his wife’s dress for the day. Conservative black with a high collar. Ritter would have liked a veil too, but this was a court of law, not a church. Now he lay back on the bed, spent, and watched Jeanne move about the room, allowing his mind to wander back through their mutual past.

Fifteen years before, he’d found her standing in the remains of a kitchen in a burnt-out house in Caen. Incongruously, she’d been holding an umbrella, as if it might protect her from the catastrophe that had overtaken her family. Her mother was dead on the other side of the room, lying in a mess of apron and blood and broken china, and there was no trace of any other members of her family, even though she told Ritter afterward that her father and a lodger had also been living in the house. That was when she got her voice back. At first she could not speak at all. Ritter visited her every day in the hospital until the army moved east. She had looked at him and said nothing, but he felt that she belonged to him. After all, she had nowhere else to go.

All the time he was away, Ritter couldn’t stop thinking about her pale blue eyes set in the small oval of her face and the way she kept entwining her fingers in her lap. She was waiting for him in Caen when he came back from Germany nine months later, and she looked just the same, except that the nuns at the hospital had cut off most of her long auburn hair. It made her look even more vulnerable than before, and Ritter wasted no time marrying her. The colonel had been their only witness.

Jeanne had become part of Ritter’s identity. But that did not mean that there was any real communication between them. Her English was far from perfect, and Ritter spoke almost no French. And in truth he had never had any idea how to talk to women. Perhaps it was that even more than his physical ugliness that explained his complete lack of success with the opposite sex until he found Jeanne. And she of course had had no choice.

Ritter missed the army. Its vertical ranking of men made sense to him. On civvy street after the war he’d drifted from one job to another, living in London bed-sits with Jeanne, eking out a living. The colonel had sent him money, and Ritter knew he’d have done more if it hadn’t been for his wife. She’d never liked Ritter. He was bad with children, and she was always obsessed with her younger son. Stevie this and Stevie that. Ritter didn’t know how the colonel had put up with it, although at least the younger boy had some spirit. The elder one just snuck about, taking photographs of people, listening at their keyholes. Ritter had enjoyed tormenting him on those long evenings after he and Jeanne had come to live at the manor-in the good days after the colonel’s wife died, smashed to bits in a car wreck. Silas had taken photographs of that too. Little bastard. And now he owned the place. One day he’d gather up enough courage to tell Ritter to leave, and there would be nothing that Ritter could do about it. He half wished that it was Silas, and not Stevie, who was on trial for murdering the colonel. Except that Silas would never have had the guts to kill anyone, let alone his father. And all the evidence pointed to Stevie. Ritter had caught him red-handed.

Ritter missed the colonel. He missed him terribly. He missed those long evenings in the study, sitting in the tall leather armchairs smoking cigars and remembering the war. The colonel had given him a home and an income and a place in the world. He’d made Ritter think well of himself. But now the sergeant was cut adrift, at the mercy of Silas Cade.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Ritter fried sausages and bacon on the stove. He stood in his shirtsleeves, methodically turning the cooking food, enjoying the smell of the sizzling fat in his nostrils. He had the place to himself, and he basked in the solitude. The kitchen in the morning made him think of his own father. As a child in Nottingham, he’d sat on a stool in the corner watching his father eating, making big doorstep sandwiches, filling his flask for the mine, until one day when he didn’t come back and Ritter ran away to join the army. Anything was better than going underground.

Sasha came in when he was finishing his breakfast, sitting at the deal table under the window, and he looked up annoyed. Silas had stayed the night in London to be closer to the court, and Sasha was never usually around this early in the day. He hadn’t expected to be disturbed.

“You’re up early,” he said, wiping egg yolk from the corners of his mouth with an already-soiled napkin.

“Yes.” Sasha remained in the doorway, looking down at Ritter, making no effort to conceal her disgust.

“Do you want something?” he asked. He’d expected her to leave once she saw him, avoiding him as she usually did around the house, but today was different for some reason.

“Yes, I want you to leave your wife alone. That’s what I want,” she said defiantly. “She’s crying again upstairs in case you didn’t know. I heard her as I came down.”

“What did you say?” asked Ritter, unable for a moment to believe his ears. Sasha’s audacity astonished him, and he sat rooted to his chair with his mouth half open, gaping up at her.

“I said you better leave Jeanne alone. Because if you don’t, I’ll make sure you don’t.”

Sasha’s voice shook but she stood her ground and the threat jolted Ritter into life. A wave of anger swept over him. What he did with his wife was his business. Not bloody Sasha’s. He got to his feet, violently pushing his plate away so that some of the uneaten food spilt over onto the table.

“You’ll make sure I don’t, will you?” he shouted, advancing on Sasha across the room. “And who the hell are you to give me orders if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I’m a private citizen protecting another private citizen. That’s all. And if you hit me, you’ll just make it worse for yourself.”

Ritter paused. His arm had been raised, but now he lowered it to his side. Sasha was right. He didn’t need trouble. Not today of all days, when he and Jeanne were going to London to give their evidence. He breathed deeply, working to control his temper. It was something he was good at, and it didn’t take him long.

“It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s hit you, I suppose, would it, Miss Vigne?” Ritter’s voice was quiet now, almost casual sounding.

“What are you talking about?”

“That burn you’re so worried about. Always wearing high collars, changing your hair style, hoping we won’t notice. But we do notice, you know. We notice all the time. Everybody does.”

It was Sasha’s turn to become angry. Her cheeks flushed a deep red and she had to fight down the impulse to put her hand up to her neck in that same self-protective gesture that had become second nature to her over the years. Ritter smiled and his eyes glinted as he sensed her vulnerability.

“Funny to be so pretty and so ugly all at the same time,” he went on musingly.

“Damn you!” Sasha spat out the words. It was as if they had been physically expelled from deep inside her body.

“And fuck you too, Miss Vigne,” Ritter said evenly. “Not that that’s something very likely to happen anytime soon, I imagine.”

They stood staring at each other for a moment, their roles reversed. Ritter was now fully in control of the situation, and it was Sasha who was on the defensive. Enjoying his advantage, he picked up his napkin from the table and dabbed it around his moustache, watching Sasha’s hands clenching into fists at her sides.

“My advice to you, Miss Sasha Vigne, is to stay with your books. Much safer than poking your nose into other people’s business.”

There wasn’t room for the two of them in the doorway and Sasha instinctively backed out of the way, avoiding contact with Ritter’s big bulk as he went past her. It felt just like a defeat.